Andreev Reflection without Fermi Surface Alignment

We address the controversy over the proximity effect between topological materials and high-T csuperconductors. Junctions are produced between Bi2Sr2CaCu2O and materials with different Fermi surfaces (Bi2Te3 and graphite). Both cases reveal tunneling ...

Understanding the evolution of anomalous anharmonicity in Bi2Te3−xSex

The anharmonic effect in thermoelectrics has been a central topic for decades in both condensed matter physics and material science. However, despite the long-believed strong and complex anharmonicity in the ...

Automatic Spike Removal Algorithm for Raman Spectra

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful technique, widely used in both academia and industry. In part, the technique’s extensive use stems from its ability to uniquely identify and image various material ...

A long-standing issue in topological insulator research has been to find a bulk single crystal material that provides a high-quality platform for characterizing topological surface states without interference from bulk electronic states. This material would ideally be a bulk insulator, have a surface state Dirac point energy well isolated from the bulk valence and conduction bands, display quantum oscillations from the surface state electrons and be growable as large, high-quality bulk single crystals. Here we show that this material obstacle is overcome by bulk crystals of lightly Sn-doped Bi1.1Sb0.9Te2S grown by the vertical Bridgman method. We characterize Sn-BSTS via angle-resolved [ Read More ]

Raman micro-spectroscopy is well suited for studying a variety of properties and has been applied to a wide range of areas. Combined with tuneable temperature, Raman spectra can o er even more insights into the properties of materials. However, previous designs of variable temperature Raman microscopes have made it extremely challenging to measure samples with low signal levels due to thermal and positional instabilities as well as low collection e ciencies. Thus contemporary Raman microscope has found limited applicability to probing the subtle physics involved in phase transitions and hysteresis. This paper describes a new design of a closed-cycle, Raman [ Read More ]

Posted by Kenneth Burch On March - 6 - 2016Comments Off on Spin-orbit excitations and electronic structure of the putative Kitaev magnet α-RuCl3

Mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling have been proposed to host unconventional magnetic states, including the Kitaev quantum spin liquid. The 4d system α-RuCl3 has recently come into view as a candidate Kitaev system, with evidence for unusual spin excitations in magnetic scattering experiments. We apply a combination of optical spectroscopy and Raman scattering to study the electronic structure of this material. Our measurements reveal a series of orbital excitations involving localized total angular momentum states of the Ru ion, implying that strong spin-orbit coupling and electron-electron interactions coexist in this material. Analysis of these features allows us to estimate [ Read More ]

Posted by Kenneth Burch On January - 28 - 2016Comments Off on Local phonon mode in thermoelectric Bi2Te2Se from charge neutral anti-sites

Local modes caused by defects play a significant role in the thermal transport properties of thermoelectrics. Of particular interest are charge-neutral defects that suppress thermal conductivity, without significantly reducing electrical transport. Here, we report a temperature dependent Raman study that identifies such a mode in a standard thermoelectric material, Bi2Te2Se. One of the modes observed, whose origin has been debated for decades, was shown most likely to be an antisite defect induced local mode. The anomalous temperature independent broadening of the local mode is ascribed to the random arrangement of Se atoms. The temperature renormalization of all modes is well [ Read More ]

Posted by Kenneth Burch On January - 27 - 2016Comments Off on When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions

The Weyl semimetal is characterized by three-dimensional linear band touching points called Weyl nodes. These nodes come in pairs with opposite chiralities. We show that the coupling of circularly polarized photons with these chiral electrons generates a Hall conductivity without any applied magnetic field in the plane orthogonal to the light propagation. This phenomenon comes about because with all three Pauli matrices exhausted to form the three-dimensional linear dispersion, the Weyl nodes cannot be gapped. Rather, the net influence of chiral photons is to shift the positions of the Weyl nodes. Interestingly, the momentum shift is tightly correlated with the [ Read More ]